Beginning in the nineteenth century with Anthony Comstock, America's 'censor in chief,' The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder explores how censors operate and why they wore out their welcome in society at large. This book explains how the same tactics were tried and eventually failed in the twentieth century, with efforts to censor music, comic books, television, and other forms of popular entertainment. The historic examples illustrate not just the mindset and tactics of censors, but why they are the ultimate counterculture warriors and why, in free societies, censors never occupy the moral high ground. This book is for anyone who wants to know more about why freedom of speech is important and how protections for free expression became part of the American identity.

Beginning in the nineteenth century with Anthony Comstock, America's 'censor in chief,' The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder explores how censors operate and why they wore out their welcome in society at large. This book explains how the same tactics were tried and eventually failed in the twentieth century, with efforts to censor music, comic books, television, and other forms of popular entertainment. The historic examples illustrate not just the mindset and tactics of censors, but why they are the ultimate counterculture warriors and why, in free societies, censors never occupy the moral high ground. This book is for anyone who wants to know more about why freedom of speech is important and how protections for free expression became part of the American identity.

During the period of decolonisation in Africa, the CIA covertly subsidised a number of African authors, editors and publishers as part of its anti-communist propaganda strategy. Managed by two front organisations, the Congress of Cultural Freedom and the Farfield Foundation, its Africa programme stretched across the continent. This Element unravels the hidden networks and associations underpinning African literary publishing in the 1960s; it evaluates the success of the CIA in secretly infiltrating and influencing African literary magazines and publishing firms, and examines the extent to which new circuits of cultural and literary power emerged. Based on new archival evidence relating to the Transcription Centre, The Classic and The New African, it includes case studies of Wole Soyinka, Nat Nakasa and Bessie Head, which assess how the authors' careers were affected by these transnational networks and also reveal how they challenged, subverted, and resisted external influence and control.

Popular conceptions of Catholic censorship, symbolized above all by the Index of Forbidden Books, figure prominently in secular definitions of freedom. To be intellectually free is to enjoy access to knowledge unimpeded by any religious authority. But how would the history of freedom change if these conceptions were false? In this panoramic study of Catholic book culture in Germany from 1770-1914, Jeffrey T. Zalar exposes the myth of faith-based intellectual repression. Catholic readers disobeyed the book rules of their church in a vast apostasy that raised personal desire and conscience over communal responsibility and doctrine. This disobedience sparked a dramatic contest between lay readers and their priests over proper book behavior that played out in homes, schools, libraries, parish meeting halls, even church confessionals. The clergy lost this contest in a fundamental reordering of cultural power that helped usher in contemporary Catholicism.

Academic freedom is under siege, as our universities become the sites of increasingly fraught battles over freedom of speech. While much of the public debate has focussed on 'no platforming' by students, this overlooks the far graver threat posed by concerted efforts to silence the critical voices of both academics and students, through the use of bureaucracy, legal threats and online harassment. Such tactics have conspicuously been used, with particularly virulent effect, in an attempt to silence academic criticism of Israel. This collection uses the controversies surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a means of exploring the limits placed on academic freedom in a variety of different national contexts. It looks at how the increased neoliberalisation of higher education has shaped the current climate, and considers how academics and their universities should respond to these new threats. Bringing together new and established scholars from Palestine and the wider Middle East as well as the US and Europe, Enforcing Silence shows us how we can and must defend our universities as places for critical thinking and free expression.

Rampant abuse, hate speech, censorship, bias, and disinformation - our Internet has problems. It is governed by technology companies - search engines, social media platforms, and infrastructure providers - whose hidden rules influence what we are allowed to see and say. In Lawless, Nicolas P. Suzor presents gripping examples of exactly how tech companies govern our digital environment and how they bend to pressure from governments and other powerful actors to censor and control the flow of information online. We are at a constitutional moment - an opportunity to rethink the basic rules of how the Internet is governed. Suzor offers a vision of a vibrant, diverse, and flourishing internet that can protect our fundamental rights from the lawless rule of tech. The culmination of more than ten years of original research, this groundbreaking work should be read by anyone who cares about the internet and the future of our shared social spaces.

Rampant abuse, hate speech, censorship, bias, and disinformation - our Internet has problems. It is governed by technology companies - search engines, social media platforms, and infrastructure providers - whose hidden rules influence what we are allowed to see and say. In Lawless, Nicolas P. Suzor presents gripping examples of exactly how tech companies govern our digital environment and how they bend to pressure from governments and other powerful actors to censor and control the flow of information online. We are at a constitutional moment - an opportunity to rethink the basic rules of how the Internet is governed. Suzor offers a vision of a vibrant, diverse, and flourishing internet that can protect our fundamental rights from the lawless rule of tech. The culmination of more than ten years of original research, this groundbreaking work should be read by anyone who cares about the internet and the future of our shared social spaces.

This collection investigates the sharpening conflict between the nation state and the internet through a multidisciplinary lens. It challenges the idea of an inherently global internet by examining its increasing territorial fragmentation and, conversely, the notion that for states online law and order is business as usual. Cyberborders based on national law are not just erected around China's online community. Cultural, political and economic forces, as reflected in national or regional norms, have also incentivised virtual borders in the West. The nation state is asserting itself. Yet, there are also signs of the receding role of the state in favour of corporations wielding influence through de-facto control over content and technology. This volume contributes to the online governance debate by joining ideas from law, politics and human geography to explore internet jurisdiction and its overlap with topics such as freedom of expression, free trade, democracy, identity and cartographic maps.

Traditionally, our society has broadly agreed that the "good university" should teach the intellectual skills students need to become citizens who are intelligently critical of their own beliefs and of the narratives presented politicians, society, the media, and, indeed, universities themselves. The freedom to debate is essential to the development of critical thought, but on university campuses today free speech is increasingly restricted for fear of causing "offense." In this daring and intrepid book, which was originally withdrawn from publication by another publisher but is now proudly presented by Academica Press, the famous intelligence researcher James R. Flynn presents the underlying factors that have circumscribed the range of ideas now tolerated in our institutions of learning. Flynn studiously examines how universities effectively censor teaching, how social and political activism effectively censors its opponents, and how academics censor themselves and each other. A Book Too Risky To Publish concludes that few universities are now living up to their original mission to promote free inquiry and unfettered critical thought. In an age marred by fake news and ever increasing social and political polarization, this book makes an impassioned argument for a return to critical thought in our institutions of higher education.

In recent years hundreds of high-profile 'free speech' incidents have rocked US college campuses. Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Ann Coulter and other right-wing speakers have faced considerable protest, with many being disinvited from speaking. These incidents are widely circulated as examples of the academy's intolerance towards conservative views. But this response is not the spontaneous outrage of the liberal colleges. There is a darker element manufacturing the crisis, funded by political operatives, and designed to achieve specific political outcomes. If you follow the money, at the heart of the issue lies the infamous and ultra-libertarian Koch donor network. Grooming extremist celebrities, funding media platforms that promote these controversies, developing legal organizations to sue universities and corrupting legislators, the influence of the Koch network runs deep. We need to abandon the 'campus free speech' narrative and instead follow the money if we ever want to root out this dangerous network from our universities.

When it first appeared in 1979, the Williams Report on Obscenity and Film Censorship provoked strong reactions. The practical issues and political principles examined are of continuing interest and remain a crucial point of reference for discussions on obscenity and censorship. Presented in a fresh series livery for the twenty-first century, and with a specially commissioned preface written by Onora O'Neill, illuminating its continuing importance and relevance to philosophical enquiry, this abridged edition of Bernard Williams's Report presents all the main findings and arguments of the full report, central to which is the application of Mill's 'harm principle' and the conclusion that restrictions are out of place where no harm can be reasonably thought to be done.

When it first appeared in 1979, the Williams Report on Obscenity and Film Censorship provoked strong reactions. The practical issues and political principles examined are of continuing interest and remain a crucial point of reference for discussions on obscenity and censorship. Presented in a fresh series livery for the twenty-first century, and with a specially commissioned preface written by Onora O'Neill, illuminating its continuing importance and relevance to philosophical enquiry, this abridged edition of Bernard Williams's Report presents all the main findings and arguments of the full report, central to which is the application of Mill's 'harm principle' and the conclusion that restrictions are out of place where no harm can be reasonably thought to be done.

Free speech has been a historically volatile issue in higher education. In recent years, however, there has been a surge of progressive censorship on campus. This wave of censorship has been characterized by the explosive growth of such policies as "trigger warnings" for course materials; "safe spaces" where students are protected from speech they consider harmful or distressing; "micro-aggression" policies that often strongly discourage the use of words that might offend sensitive individuals; new "bias-reporting" programs that consist of different degrees of campus surveillance; the "dis-invitation" of a growing list of speakers, including many in the mainstream of American politics and values; and the prominent "shouting down" or disruption of speakers deemed inconsistent with progressive ideology. Not to be outdone, external forces on the right are now engaging in social media bullying of speakers and teachers whose views upset them. The essays in this collection, written by prominent philosophers, political scientists, sociologists, and legal scholars, examine the issues at the forefront of the crisis of free speech in higher education. The contributors address the broader historical, cultural, legal, and normative contexts of the current crisis, and take care to analyze the role of "due process" in protecting academic freedom and individuals accused of misconduct. Additionally, the volume is unique in that it advances practical remedies to campus censorship, as the editors and many of the contributors have participated in movements to remedy limitations on free speech and open inquiry. The Value and Limits of Academic Speech will educate academic professionals and informed citizens about the phenomenon of progressive censorship and its implications for higher education and the republic.

Crimes against History takes a global approach to the extreme forms of censorship to which history and historians have been subjected through the ages. The book opens by considering the varieties of censorship, from suppression, dismissal, and defamation to persecution and murder. Part I, "Kill switch," tells the tragic story of how the censorship of history has sometimes turned into deadly crimes against history, with chapters looking at topics such as historians and archivists being killed for political reasons, attacks by political leaders on historians, iconoclastic breaks with the past, and fake news. Part II, "Fragile freedom," reverses the perspective and examines how the censorship of history has backfired. Chapters consider the subversive power of historical analogies and resistance to the censorship of history. The book also contains a "Provisional memorial for history producers killed for political reasons (from ancient times until 2017)". It is a double tribute: to the history producers who were killed and to those who mustered the courage to resist the blows of censorship.

The Censorship Effect argues that the stylistic features that prompted the criminal indictment of Madame Bovary and Les Fleurs du Mal were the products of an intense struggle and negotiation with a culture of censorship. Censorship not only shaped the composition of these works but affected their reception and continues to operate in the field of literary criticism. Far from manifesting the autonomy proclaimed by modernism's defenders, both works show (and retain) signs of self-censorship. French modernism begins and remains deeply embedded in a culture of censorship whose proprieties, both literary and social, Baudelaire and Flaubert nevertheless challenged and transgressed.

A groundbreaking and surprising look at contemporary censorship in China As authoritarian governments around the world develop sophisticated technologies for controlling information, many observers have predicted that these controls would be ineffective because they are easily thwarted and evaded by savvy Internet users. In Censored, Margaret Roberts demonstrates that even censorship that is easy to circumvent can still be enormously effective. Taking advantage of digital data harvested from the Chinese Internet and leaks from China's Propaganda Department, this important book sheds light on how and when censorship influences the Chinese public. Roberts finds that much of censorship in China works not by making information impossible to access but by requiring those seeking information to spend extra time and money for access. By inconveniencing users, censorship diverts the attention of citizens and powerfully shapes the spread of information. When Internet users notice blatant censorship, they are willing to compensate for better access. But subtler censorship, such as burying search results or introducing distracting information on the web, is more effective because users are less aware of it. Roberts challenges the conventional wisdom that online censorship is undermined when it is incomplete and shows instead how censorship's porous nature is used strategically to divide the public. Drawing parallels between censorship in China and the way information is manipulated in the United States and other democracies, Roberts reveals how Internet users are susceptible to control even in the most open societies. Demonstrating how censorship travels across countries and technologies, Censored gives an unprecedented view of how governments encroach on the media consumption of citizens.

Throughout Western history, there have been those who felt compelled to share a dissenting opinion on public matters, while still hoping to avoid the social, political, and even criminal consequences for exercising free speech. In this collection of fourteen original essays, editors Han Baltussen and Peter J. Davis trace the roots of censorship far beyond its supposed origins in early modern history. Beginning with the ancient Greek concept of parrhesia, and its Roman equivalent libertas, the contributors to The Art of Veiled Speech examine lesser-known texts from historical periods, some famous for setting the benchmark for free speech, such as fifth-century Athens and republican Rome, and others for censorship, such as early imperial and late antique Rome. Medieval attempts to suppress heresy, the Spanish Inquisition, and the writings of Thomas Hobbes during the Reformation are among the examples chosen to illustrate an explicit link of cultural censorship across time, casting new light on a range of issues: Which circumstances and limits on free speech were in play? What did it mean for someone to "speak up" or "speak truth to authority"? Drawing on poetry, history, drama, and moral and political philosophy the volume demonstrates the many ways that writers over the last 2500 years have used wordplay, innuendo, and other forms of veiled speech to conceal their subversive views, anticipating censorship and making efforts to get around it. The Art of Veiled Speech offers new insights into the ingenious methods of self-censorship to express controversial views, revealing that the human voice cannot be easily silenced. Contributors: Pauline Allen, Han Baltussen, Megan Cassidy-Welch, Peter J. Davis, Andrew Hartwig, Gesine Manuwald, Bronwen Neil, Lara O'Sullivan, Jon Parkin, John Penwill, Francois Soyer, Marcus Wilson, Ioannis Ziogas.

Throughout history and across the globe, governments have taken a strong hand in censoring music. Whether in the interests of "safeguarding" the moral and religious values of their citizens or of promoting their own political goals, the character and severity of actions taken to suppress and control music that has been categorized as unacceptable, immoral, or as the Nazi's termed the music of Jewish and modernist composers, "degenerate," ranges from economic sanctions to forced immigration, imprisonment, and death. Yet in almost all cases composers found methods to counter this suppression and to let their voices be heard, even through the very music they were often forced to compose for the oppressing parties. In this first major collection of its kind, thirty contributors tackle centuries of music censorship across the globe from the medieval era to the modern day. Case studies address a number of instances both well- and lesser-known, including the tumultuous history of Wagner and Israel, rap music in the United States, silencing of women composers, and music in post-revolutionary Iran. Sections are organized by nature of censorship - religious, racial, and sexual - and type of government enforcement - democratic, totalitarian, and transitional. Focusing on individual composers and artists as well as eras within single countries, this Handbook champions the efficacy of music as an agent of collective power and resilience.

Renowned interviewer David Barsamian showcases his unique access to Chomsky's thinking on a number of topics of contemporary and historical import. Chomsky offers insights into the institutions that shape the public mind in the service of power and profit. In an interview conducted after the important November 1999 "Battle in Seattle," Chomsky discusses prospects for building a movement to challenge corporate domination of the media, the environment, and even our private lives. Whether discussing U.S. military escalation in Colombia, attacks on Social Security, or growing inequality worldwide, Chomsky shows how ordinary people, if they work together, have the power to make meaningful change.

The Culture of Secrecy is the first comprehensive study of the restriction of official information in modern British history. It seeks to understand why secrets have been kept, and how systems of control have been constructed - and challenged - over the past hundred and sixty years. The author transcends the conventional boundaries of political or social history in his wide-ranging diagnosis of the `British disease' - the legal forms and habits of mind which together have constituted the national tradition of discreet reserve. The chapters range across bureaucrats and ballots, gossip and gay rights, doctors and dole investigators in their exploration of the ethical basis of power in the public, professional, commercial and domestic spheres. Professor Vincent examines concepts such as privacy and confidentiality, honour and integrity, openness and freedom of expression, which have served as benchmarks in the development of the liberal state and society.

Focusing on the attempted and successful banning of young adult fiction from media centers and classrooms, this book treats the legal and experiential history of censorship in libraries and public schools. It also looks closely at young adult novels from the early 1970s until today that have been the subject of book challenges. The authors discussed include Judy Blume, S.E. Hinton, Chris Crutcher, Jean Craighead George, M.E. Kerr, Mildred Taylor, and Sherman Alexie. This book offers parents, teachers and librarians arguments against censorship based on literary merit and societal benefit.

"Better Left Unsaid" is in the unseemly position of defending censorship from the central allegations that are traditionally leveled against it. Taking two genres generally presumed to have been stymied by the censor's knife--the Victorian novel and classical Hollywood film--this book reveals the varied ways in which censorship, for all its blustery self-righteousness, can actually be good for sex, politics, feminism, and art.
As much as Victorianism is equated with such cultural impulses as repression and prudery, few scholars have explored the Victorian novel as a "censored" commodity--thanks, in large part, to the indirectness and intangibility of England's literary censorship process. This indirection stands in sharp contrast to the explicit, detailed formality of Hollywood's infamous Production Code of 1930. In comparing these two versions of censorship, Nora Gilbert explores the paradoxical effects of prohibitive practices. Rather than being ruined by censorship, Victorian novels and Hays Code films were stirred and stimulated by the very forces meant to restrain them.

A comprehensive history of censorship in modern Britain For Victorian lawmakers and judges, the question of whether a book should be allowed to circulate freely depended on whether it was sold to readers whose mental and moral capacities were in doubt, by which they meant the increasingly literate and enfranchised working classes. The law stayed this way even as society evolved. In 1960, in the obscenity trial over D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, the prosecutor asked the jury, "Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?" Christopher Hilliard traces the history of British censorship from the Victorians to Margaret Thatcher, exposing the tensions between obscenity law and a changing British society. Hilliard goes behind the scenes of major obscenity trials and uncovers the routines of everyday censorship, shedding new light on the British reception of literary modernism and popular entertainments such as the cinema and American-style pulp fiction and comic books. He reveals the thinking of lawyers and the police, authors and publishers, and politicians and ordinary citizens as they wrestled with questions of freedom and morality. He describes how supporters and opponents of censorship alike tried to remake the law as they reckoned with changes in sexuality and culture that began in the 1960s. Based on extensive archival research, this incisive and multifaceted book reveals how the issue of censorship challenged British society to confront issues ranging from mass literacy and democratization to feminism, gay rights, and multiculturalism.

This book analyzes the discourses and deliberations in the discussion forums of three of the most visited Islamic websites. In doing so, it explores the potential impact of the Islamic public sphere, as well as the re-configuration of the 'virtual umma' (Islamic community) online on the creation of multiple identities and resistances, which manifest themselves through various Islamic sites, producing varying degrees of consensus, divergence, and negotiation in multiple contexts and across different discourses. The book also investigates the extent to which these Islamic websites have provided a venue for Muslims to freely engage in vibrant deliberations and constructive discussions among themselves, as well as with 'Others', i.e., non-Muslims, about various political, economic, religious and social issues.

This 2001 book examines the ways in which books were produced, read and received during the reign of King James I. It challenges prevailing attitudes that press censorship in Jacobean England differed little from either the 'whole machinery of control' enacted by the Court of Star Chamber under Elizabeth or the draconian campaign implemented by Archbishop Laud, during the reign of Charles I. Cyndia Clegg, building on her earlier study Press Censorship in Elizabethan England, contends that although the principal mechanisms for controlling the press altered little between 1558 and 1603, the actual practice of censorship under King James I varied significantly from Elizabethan practice. The book combines historical analysis of documents with literary reading of censored texts and exposes the kinds of tensions that really mattered in Jacobean culture. It will be an invaluable resource for literary scholars and historians alike.